Nietzsche
by ilexx
Summary: Exactly what it says. Andromeda-style, of course.


I don't own anything.

Set after the events of MOADD.

They couldn't take off that night, had to wait for Tyr to... settle his affairs – whatever this might have meant exactly – on Midden: Dylan, being Dylan, presumed it had something to do with ensuring a safe life for Yvaine and the boy. And, lacking any further information hinting to something else, Beka had decided to go along with the captain's interpretation and give the Kodiak for once the benefit of the doubt, even though the concept of a caring, concerned Tyr Anasazi sat a bit ill with her – even more so than the cold, selfish mercenary did.

Turned out the weather on Midden was slightly wet – and cold. And the sun set early. And the _Maru_ was – in spite of Beka's efforts – still low on everything, so they couldn't really turn on full heat and lights and find some comfort. They could only afford a bit of heating and some flickering lights in the crew's quarters and even had to cook their food outside the ship, on an open fire. Tyr didn't mind: he had decided to spend his last night with Yvaine and the kid at their place, that was indeed much more pleasant under the circumstances than the old, battered spaceship, to which _Andromeda_'s captain and first officer were confined for the night – courtesy of Dylan's strange ideas about manners and discretion, that had prompted him into the decision to give Tyr some privacy.

Beka wasn't happy. Last time Dylan had granted Tyr privacy, he had taken off with her ship and wrecked it. Okay, so they were now both her and the High Guard onboard the _Maru_, and nothing was likely to happen to her baby this time. Still: the night's a strange advisor, who knew what it might make Tyr come up with?...

And now there they were, uncomfortable and cold and tired after a day spent on repairs... Yet after some makeshift supper Dylan, with that annoying tough-guy attitude he sometimes displayed, had offered her all available blankets against the chill of the night, had turned around towards the bulkhead and fallen asleep with irritating ease, that made all inclination Beka might have felt to spare one of the covers for him disappear from her mind almost instantaneously. Oh, but the man could be infuriating!

She wrapped herself up into as many blankets as she had at her disposal and shifted around – for minutes – to find a comfortable position, finally drifting off to sleep herself, still shivering, still unhappy.

-

It was the dead of the night – witching hour, as Harper would have put it – when she woke up again, very hot, with her mouth dry and in a slight panic. A quick check outside showed a moon shining wanly down on the darkness surrounding them. Beka drank a glass of water and wiped her forehead with a towel, then turned back to the crew's quarters. She noticed, with a somewhat mean pleasure, that Dylan was – although still asleep – all curled up on himself against the cold. With a smirk she peeled off two blankets from her bunk and threw them over him, then went back to bed herself, only to find out that she couldn't sleep anymore. Annoyed, she let her eyes roam around for a bit and finally noticed a book on the floor, somewhere close to Dylan. Lazily she stretched a hand out and grabbed for it. Maybe reading was a good idea: it could calm down her anxiety, besides... reading was always good for one, right? Right.

Dear God, but that was a really, really thick one, she thought, her enthusiasm dropping while she turned around to find out what it was. Beka rolled her eyes. Friedrich Nietzsche! Her enthusiasm dropping even further, she opened the massive tome, her hands normally used to flexis with holo-novels on vampires and ghosts clumsily turning the pages while trying to figure out a comfortable way to hold it.

Nietzsche! The guy was brutal! As well as she could, Beka began to fight her way through one interminable sentence after another. But as soon as she had reached the end, she had to admit that she had already forgotten how the phrase had started. Had the fellow gotten paid by the word? Okay, so maybe it wasn't him, maybe it was her, right? After all, Tyr and Dylan could get through this stuff, yes? Maybe her grey matter was just not suited for this...

The whole thing was written.... in a way much too complicated, with an awfully smug undertone about it. And amazingly boring. Or was that just her impression, as she was forcing herself to go over every damned line three times in a row?

_War has always been the grand sagacity of every spirit which has grown too inward and too profound; its curative power lies even in the wounds one receives._

_When one has finished building one's house, one suddenly realizes that in the process one has learned something that one really needed to know in the worst way - before one began._

_Women are considered deep - why? Because one can never discover any bottom to them. Women are not even shallow._

_You say it is the good cause that hallows even war? I say unto you: it is the good war that hallows any cause._

_You have your way, I have my way; as for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist._

How lovely! The perfect excuse to follow just one's own whims. At a loss, Beka finally turned over to the last page, that displayed the... esteemed author's biography. Friedrich Nietzsche apparently had spent his last years on earth in Weimar, Germany, confined to a facility for the mentally deranged. The _Maru_'s captain sighed. Oh yes, somehow she had already suspected something like that. Why, oh why did the humans' predominance over the culture of the Known Worlds always lead to such things? Why did every nutcase who had at one time or another spent some time in the salons of Weimar, Paris, New York, Beijing or Florence have to be declared a shining symbol of enlightenment, regardless of the things he really had come up with? Why had the universe's classics have to turn out as lunatics, more or less? Some "dominant culture", my ass...

With a sigh, Beka closed the book and lifted her eyes. In his bunk Dylan was huddled under his blankets, wide awake – and smiling.

"Having fun?"

She almost felt tempted to throw the tome at him.

"Is that yours?"

"Yep."

"Have you really read that?" she asked him, accusatorily waving the massive thing around.

He nodded with a mischievous gleam in his eye.

"All of it?"

He nodded again.

"And do you like any of it?"

"Nope."

"Then why do the Nietzscheans like it?"

He grinned even broader. Beka frowned... Then shook her head.

"No!" she gasped.

"Oh yes," Dylan insisted. With a laugh, he reached behind himself and picked up a tiny little paperback from a small shelf just above his head, throwing it over to her.

_The Hitchhiker's Guide to Friedrich Nietzsche_, it read.

"Where did you find it?" Beka wanted to know.

"Here, Tyr must have left it..."

The blonde rolled her eyes, snorted, then rolled her eyes some more.

"Geez, go figure... Mr. 'Survival of the fittest, complacency is weakness, weakness is death' himself... Taking the short cut!"

And a whole culture founded on a bunch of misinterpreted aphorisms. Beka closed her eyes. She had been right to panic. It was a frikking nightmare!


End file.
